Monthly Archives: January 2014

Four of us met with Steve Joul to complete the survey of the tit boxes from the Slabbering Baby down to the Seven Arches – a total of nine boxes.  Eight contained tit nests and one seemed to contain the remains of a bumble bee nest.

See the insect cocoons in the hinge area of the box

Each survey your correspondent notices new things.  This year, one of the new “discoveries” was that insect larvae gnaw at the wood, leaving what seem to be teeth marks (though they cannot be teeth marks due to their position), and use the wood to create cocoons.  This phenomenon is shown in the picture: click on the picture for a better view.

Last January we took down the starling box as a squirrel or woodpecker had clearly attacked the entrance hole and made it bigger.  This year we put it back up as David had reinforced the entrance with steel sheets!  The starling box differs from the tit boxes in that it is about twice the depth and the entrance hole on this particular one is on the side rather than the front of the box.  It is also distinguished by sheets of steel around the entrance hole!

A nest in one of the Woodstone boxes put up last January.

It took us about three hours to complete the survey.  Having completed the survey, your correspondent and Steve returned to the picnic area and put up a new box number 12 to replace the original which has disappeared without trace.

The fibrous mass found in a robin nest box

 

Our readers might be interested in the following exchange between your correspondent and Steve Joul in relation to the strange fibrous mass found in one of the robin nest boxes.

 

 

Steve Joul:  I thought you would be interested to see my photos of the wax moth cocoons and a larva that popped out on my desk

Response:  Is the lump of brown stuff in the pictures the stuff that was in our nest box?

Steve Joul:  Yes, I think it is an accumulation of the silken cocoons of the Bee Moth. It could possibly be the Wax Moth or the Lesser Wax Moth I’m not definitely sure but the Bee Moth is most likely to live with Bumble Bees.

It’s clearly meant to be communal (the cocoons are joined together into a mat) and very tough to penetrate (I could not tear it). This was on the underside of the lid of the nestbox.

It was also originally surrounded by a silken web which I believe was produced when the larvae were feeding on the nest to protect them from the bees which might otherwise remove them from the nest. I believe the caterpillars eat everything in the nest including the wax nest, food stores, dead bees etc.

Usually weak or failing colonies without a queen are most susceptible apparently.  The adult moths detect the bees by scent then lay their eggs, about a hundred from what I’ve read.

A quick google reveals that the two Wax Moths are the scourge of bee keeper. I believe it is most commonly the Lesser Wax Moth which lives with Honey Bees but usually not Bumblebees.

There is confusion over the correct identification of the species which are very similar.

I read that the Wax Moth caterpillars can eat the caterpillars of the Lesser Wax Moth.

I’ve also read that the Wax Moth will eat diseased parts of the hive, removing it and stopping the disease from spreading and so has sometimes been useful in commercial beekeeping. This was apparently the case when it was introduced to New Zealand when the incidence of disease was reduced. So, there is sometimes disagreement about whether having Wax Moths living with the bees is a good or a bad thing.

A full day surveying nest boxes from 10 am till 4 pm with Steve Joul.

Five of us surveyed all the nest boxes north of Old Leo’s Rugby club, along Crag Lane to the picnic area and then down the Meanwood Valley trail to the footbridge over the stream by the Slabbering Baby.

Last January we “upgraded” our nest boxes by replacing some with Woodstone nest boxes, adapting some so that we could easily lift them down and clean them at ground level, and improving some by putting a plastic covering over the lid and back of the nest boxes to keep them dry.

We were keen to see how the nest boxes had fared in what has been a remarkably wet Autumn and Winter.

The first thing to say is that some of the wooden nest boxes were very wet and damp.  Disappointingly, nesting material at the bottom of the woodstone nest boxes was surprisingly damp whilst the material at the top was dry.  It seemed that any damp filtered down to the bottom of the nest boxes where it had no way of escape and no aeration.  In contrast, the nesting material in the wooden boxes tended to be dry – presumably because there were plenty of gaps in the bottom of the nest boxes for air to circulate through the boxes.

The plastic covering put on the lid and back of the wooden boxes did seem to be very effective in keeping the boxes dry.

We did not adapt all of the nest boxes last January and so today we took the opportunity to take down damp unadapted boxes and replace them with refurbished boxes so far as the supply of refurbished boxes allowed and one or two we refurbished “on the job”.

By the end of our survey, all nest boxes had been adapted so that they could be lifted down from the trees to be cleaned (originally they were nailed on to the trees).

Nest box number 8 had to be rescued from a tree which had snapped in half – right where the nest box had been placed, and another, number 12, had simply disappeared without trace!

Once more, virtually all of the nest boxes had been used for nesting by tits.  Whereas last year two boxes had been used by nuthatches (which seal up the lids of the boxes with mud and make a nest of wood chippings – see a picture in last years blog), no boxes seem to have been used by nuthatches this year.  I say “seem” because one box contained strips of bark which may have been nesting material.  However, they were unlike the building blocks of the previous nuthatch nests and the nest box lid had not been sealed up with mud.

On the 12 January we surveyed the robin boxes and found one box contained a very strange fibrous construction covered in cobwebs, while the bottom of the box was full of leaves.  Steve inspected this box today and the best explanation seems to be that bumblebees built a nest in the nest box, and that a species of wax moth then laid eggs in the nest and destroyed it.  Images of the damage that wax moths can cause to honey bee hives seem very congruent with this explanation – as do the presence of a number of dead bumblebees in the bottom of the nest box.

One of the other nest boxes seems to have been used by bumblebees – which is something which we have not seen in previous years surveys.

Steve brought with him some callipers for measuring any eggs which we found in the nest boxes.

Finally, one other feature which your correspondent had not noticed in previous years, is that the inside of many of the nest boxes had marks like teeth marks gouged in the wood.  It seems that this is the result of moth larvae chewing into the wood.

Today was a really interesting day and we were blessed with very mild and pleasant weather throughout the day.

This morning an enthusiastic team of litter pickers met up to spend an hour or so picking up the litter which had accumulated over the Christmas break.

One public spirited individual had kindly dumped nine empty chemical drums in the woods – marked as toxic to aquatic life.  We arranged for Steve Joul to collect these so that they could be disposed of properly.

There was a huge amount of litter and between us we picked up about ten bags of rubbish plus assorted objects which were too large to go in bags.  Clearly, there had been many parties in the woods over the last few weeks because there were bottles and cans everywhere.  A satisfying morning’s work improving the woods for humans and wildlife – but why do our fellow humans make it necessary?

Four of us met in Old Leo’s car park to join Steve Joul in surveying and cleaning the FOAW nest boxes.

Unfortunately, Steve’s new land rover had a flat battery which meant he could not bring the necessary ladders.  Undeterred, we decided to clean the robin boxes which are all at low level – two or three feet from the ground – and concealed in the middle of holly bushes.

Midway round we were joined by David.

Robin nest boxes are different from tit boxes in that robin boxes have an open front while tit boxes have a round hole for the entrance.

We have put up five robin boxes and, for the first time ever, we were able to find all five of them!  One particular nest has eluded us ever since we put it up and we found it entirely by chance this year when picking up a piece of litter:  there, five feet away in the middle of a holly bush was the elusive box.  The fault was that of your correspondent whose map making skills clearly need to be improved.  However, the map has now been updated to show the correct position of the nest box.

The results were as follows (the boxes having numbers which follow no particular order):

Box 6: nest and two unhatched eggs  ——    Box 9: nest

Box 15:  not used  —— Box 19:  strange contents – see below

Box 31: not used, but something had chewed the lip of the entrance.

The nests were tit nests rather than robin nests.

The contents of box 19 were very unusual:  a kind of fibrous mass was attached to the inside of the lid and the inside of the box, covered in cobwebs, and lots of leaves and dead bees in the bottom of the box.  It was so unusual that we decided not to clean that box but leave it for Steve to have a look at when we surveyed the rest of the boxes later in the month.

At the end of the morning, David joined your correspondent to help refurbish a couple more nest boxes.

Happy New Year!

Four of us met for an hour or two to work off the Christmas excesses and refurbish half a dozen nest boxes which have been mouldering in a garage for the last year.

We cleaned them out and fitted each of them with a plastic covering for the roof and back so that they were all as good as new, if not better.

Any similarities to fictional characters like those in The Last of the Summer Wine are entirely coincidental.